The Board of Cricket Control of India on Thursday announced the schedule of the upcoming Duleep Trophy which will be held from September 7-29 in Kanpur and Lucknow. The tournament will be played under lights and with the pink ball.
The Red, Green and Blue team will be led by Abhinav Mukund, Parthiv Patel, and Suresh Raina respectively. Raina will look to make this tournament count as he tries to make a comeback in the ODI squad. He will get at least two four-day games to make a mark of himself.
Murali Vijay will also make a comeback after missing out on the Sri Lanka tour due to a wrist injury. He will be keen to retain his opening slot in the longer format of the game with Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul scoring well in the Sri Lanka series. Vijay will represent India Green under the captaincy of Parthiv Patel. Other prominent players to take part in the tournament are Karun Nair, Manoj Tiwari, and Ishant Sharma to name a few.
Earlier, the cricketing body had decided to scrap this tournament from this calendar year citing a cramped calendar and non-availability of venues. However, the Committee of Administrators (CoA) appointed by the Supreme Court ordered BCCI to retain this tournament for the 2017-18 domestic schedule terming it an ‘important tournament’. This made the BCCI reverse its decision and published the schedule a day later.
The Five-day final match will be played in the capital city of Uttar Pradesh from September 25-29.
Squads
India Red: Abhinav Mukund (capt), Priyank Panchal, Sudip Chatterjee, Ishank Jaggi, Ambati Rayudu, Dinesh Karthik, Rishabh Pant (wk), B Indrajith, K Gowtham, Karn Sharma, Basil Thampi, Dhawal Kulkarni, Ashok Dinda, Rahul Singh, CV Milind
India Green: M Vijay, R Samarth, Prashant Chopra, Shreyas Iyer, Karun Nair, Ankit Bawne, Parthiv Patel (capt & wk), Shahbaz Nadeem, Parvez Rasool, Navdeep Saini, Mohammed Siraj, Sidharth Kaul, Mayank Dagar, Nitin Saini, Aniket Choudhary.
India Blue: Suresh Raina (capt), Samit Gohel, KS Bharat, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Manoj Tiwary, Deepak Hooda, Vijay Shankar, Ishan Kishan (wk), Jayant Yadav, Bhargav Bhatt, Kaushik Gandhi, Ishant Sharma, Ankit Rajpoot, Sagun Kamat, Jaydev Unadkat
| Match 1 | Sep 07-10 | Lucknow | India Red | India Green |
| Match 2 | Sep 13-16 | Kanpur | India Red | India Blue |
| Match 3 | Sept 19-22 | Kanpur | India Blue | India Green |
| Final | Sept 25-29 | Lucknow | TBD | TBD |